Lightless Winter Night

She tied the victim's hands and feet. Then she tightened the rope—slowly, gradually, point by point. She didn't cover the mouth and nose with force. She adjusted the angle, so the victim would feel the pain of suffocation. Then she untied the rope, wiped away the fingerprints, and turned on every light in the room. "Auntie, does this count as avenging you?" On Chinese New Year's Eve, the body of a twenty-three-year-old woman is found in the basement of an abandoned construction site in Lanhai City. The cause of death is asphyxia. But the scene makes veteran detective He Yu catch his breath—a stun gun, hemp rope, half-burned charcoal, and a Buddha statue arranged in a ritual pose. The killer didn't just prepare tools. They made the death look like an act of atonement. The victim, Song Dongyue, graduated six months ago. She claimed on social media to be a producer-director. She is now unemployed. The suspects arrive like snowflakes: her best friend, a top celebrity, a man who once pursued her, a retired soldier. Yet He Yu quickly realizes—every one of them is hiding a secret, and every one of them is covering one lie with another. As the investigation deepens, a truth buried for fifteen years slowly surfaces. That winter, a young girl abandoned by her birth parents wandered to Wuzhou. A stranger gave her warmth, hot milk, and a feeling of being valued that an orphan had never known. Two years later, that woman died in a car accident. The one who pushed her was a junior high school girl. That girl was Song Dongyue. That little girl was Rugu. Now, Rugu has spent fifteen years laying a chessboard—so that Song Dongyue would die as a "sinner" before the very light she once extinguished. On the morning after the murder, five trending hashtags land on Weibo. Rumors explode. Brands cancel contracts. The police, the media, and the public all want a name. He Yu finds the only person who knows the truth—Rugu herself, who is more composed than anyone else, smoking a cigarette, dressed in fashion, with delicate makeup. She doesn't look like a monster. She even says: "I think I confessed on purpose." This is not a whodunit. This is a story where the killer wins.